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“Catholic” abortionist quits after woman expresses regret

Norma Goldberger was the owner and director of an abortion clinic. In her career she presided over thousands of abortions and worked with a number of different abortionists over the years. In her book Abortion Confidential: Secrets of an Abortion Clinic Owner, she writes about the difficulty of finding doctors to perform abortions. Constantly wanting to expand and bring in more abortion business, she was always seeking new abortionists. At one point, the medical director and head abortionist found another doctor who was considering working at the abortion facility. But he had some reservations…

One day the medical director announced he had a new doctor who would work part-time. This new doctor arrived and explained that he was Catholic and unsure if he wanted to perform abortions. He said he would try it for one shift.

Despite his professed Catholic faith, this put his moral qualms and the teachings of his faith aside and did a few abortions. But then something happened:

After he completed several abortions, a patient told him, “I never wanted to have an abortion.” He then informed me, “I never want to hear that again. I can’t come back.”

Shocking as the woman’s statement seems, it’s not unusual for a woman to go through an abortion procedure without truly wanting to. In fact, one study shows that up to 64% of women who have abortions get them due to pressure from someone else – usually the baby’s father. Other times, it is the parents of a teenage daughter who are forcing her to have an abortion she doesn’t want.

Whether this woman was pressured to abort by someone in her life or she felt overwhelmed by her situation, she believed she had no choice. It was clear that she regretted her abortion. The doctor realized he was not helping women who were freely choosing to have abortions – in at least some cases he was harming women who felt that they had no other choice. The “Catholic” doctor was not moved by the plight of the preborn babies being killed in the womb, but he was not as hardened and indifferent to the suffering of their mothers. When he realized he was also harming the women, his conscience was pricked, and he stopped doing abortions.

Goldberger, of course, has her own take on what the woman meant:

As experienced abortion clinic workers we knew the patient meant she would have preferred not to have been in the situation to need an abortion. However, what she said pushed the guilt button in the doctor and he never returned.

Women often regret the abortion itself, not merely the circumstances surrounding it. While it’s true that very few women want an unplanned pregnancy (even the most ardently pro-choice women generally don’t wake up one morning and say, “I think I’ll have an unplanned pregnancy and get an abortion this month; I’ll put that on my to-do list”) it’s not just the situation that women regret. Many women regret the abortion itself. Women mourn the loss of their children. The internet is full of stories from these women. Groups like Silent No More have collected thousands of testimonies from women who wish they made a different choice.

As the owner of an abortion facility, it is much easier for Goldberger to see women crying in the recovery room and believe their tears are caused by the stress of the unplanned pregnancy and not by the loss of their children. Saying that women who regret their abortions are upset by their pre-abortion circumstances rather than the abortion allows abortion workers to avoid responsibility for women’s suffering. It’s nothing they’ve done, they can tell themselves – she had problems when she walked in the door.

At an abortion facility, the woman is offered one solution: abortion. Take it or leave it. Terminate the baby, or go on your way. And make sure you pay us first. And if you regret it, so be it. It’s the situation you’re regretting, not what we did. Now go off and deal with it on your own. We’re ready for the next patient.

This is not an industry that helps women. It is an industry that preys on women at the most vulnerable time in their lives, taking their money and killing their children. Fortunately, the “Catholic” abortionist realized this before becoming entrenched in the abortion industry. It is only said that he had to destroy several babies before figuring it out.